Work in progress ... building work at Johannesburg's Soccer City is not all that is not finished ahead of next year's World Cup. Photograph: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

After a week in Johannesburg, you'll never bad-mouth London taxi drivers again. In my experience the cab drivers here, while perfectly polite, chatty and safe, don't have the faintest idea where they're going.

Not long after moving to the city, I tried to take a ride to a restaurant called Wombles. We headed south to Parktown, when in fact we should have gone north to the very different Parktown North. We got to my target destination in the end, but if you're using taxis within Johannesburg, remember to leave a spare hour.

That said, I'm sure few drivers can afford an in-car GPS. It's a far more ad hoc industry than in London, and I doubt there's any such thing as The Knowledge. It's also worth remembering that if you ask for a "taxi" in South Africa, people will probably assume you mean minibus taxis which cram in a dozen or more people - usually low-income black workers. Taxi cars, as seen in the western countries, are more often found outside shopping malls or can be ordered by phone. They are a rare sight in Johannesburg where, like Los Angeles, car ownership is king.

But tourists heading to South Africa for the World Cup next year have other alternatives to hiring their own car – in theory at least. There is a race against time to complete the multi-million pound Gautrain, an express service from Johannesburg's main airport to suburbs such as Sandton and Rosebank and to Pretoria. With security guards and pricey tickets, this is aimed at international visitors and the middle-class.

In recent weeks we've also seen the launch of the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System, a grand title for what you and I would call a bus network. It was the quickest and cheapest alternative to building an underground railway. Glass and concrete wheelchair-friendly platforms were raised in the middle of city streets, much to the chagrin of motorists. These are served by smart and frequent buses that have proved popular so far, carrying 16,000 passengers a day.

Similar networks are heading to cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria and are expected to help football fans get around next year.

But not everyone loves Rea Vaya. Feeling threatened, South Africa's minibus taxi owners have fought to protect their businesses. They have so far been appeased with a share of ownership of the new service, but the truce remains an uneasy one.

The minibus taxis were one of the few black-owned industries during the apartheid era and played a part in the struggle. But today they have an unhappy reputation for overcrowding and accidents - 70,000 crashes per year - and even face allegations of gangsterism. Within days of the first journey, a Rea Vaya bus was shot at in Soweto, enough to make anyone think twice about boarding.

I'm told the World Cup organisers realise that transport arguably remains their biggest headache. What about fans based hundreds of miles away from the game? What about fans who linger for one pint too many and get held up in traffic? Sit tight for a rocky ride.